Trinidad – Wayne to end hunger strike

PORT OF SPAIN – Environmental activist Dr Wayne Kublalsingh will end his hunger strike on Wednesday almost nine months after he began his second hunger strike.

Kublalsingh told the Express on Monday that the people of Debe and Mon Desir needed him to fight for them and he could not remain on a bed any longer.

The activist who have engaged in two hunger strikes in an attempt to get Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to change the route of the extension of the Solomon Hochoy Highway to Point Fortin said he was feeling healthy but very weak.

Dr Wayne Kublalsingh will end his hunger strike on Wednesday.

The leader of the Highway Re-Route Movement (HRM) said a press conference was planned for Tuesday at Gopie Trace, Debe to announce the end of the “limited hunger strike.”

It has been 288 days that Kublalsingh has claimed that he has not eaten solid foods, instead surviving on water and leaves.

He plans to break his hunger strike with prayers and and by eating something “light”.

Kublalsingh said: “I will do morning prayer. I have mango tree behind my house. I go and pray for a couple of hours, do my morning meditation there. I will start eating on Wednesday morning. I will probably eat some light thing, have some tulsi (leaf) and water as I normally do and I will have something light. I will ask my mother to make something for me.”

Kublalsingh has been staying at his parents’ home in Claxton Bay for some time.

He said: “I cannot lie down here anymore. In my view, is that this sacrifice and prayer has moved events in our favour, I don’t want to say what they are, let those who have eyes to see and those who have ears to hear. Things are going to move politically and economically in our favour I am sure of that.”

Kublalsingh said: “People on the ground have been really severely abused because Nidco (National Infrastructure Development Company) is trying to push the work and expedite the work between Debe and Mon Desir and elections are coming up. I think it is now time for me to rise and fight again as I have always fought. Secondly I think they did bad enough to shape the cosmos meaning move things in our favour and I think those things will happen.”

For the press conference on Tuesday, Kublalsingh said: “I will be walking on the land and making it clear to the people there at that area where they working next to the camp that we don’t want any interchange there.”

HRM also did not want an interchange at Penal, Siparia and Fyzabad.

He said he was not sure exactly how HRM was going to fight against those constructions.

“We just do the things that we normally do which is fight to the finish,” Kublalsingh said.

And he boasted of not being ill during the hunger strike even with the flu.

He said: “I feel pretty healthy and I just feel weak and I can’t walk properly. I have to feed myself for the next couple of weeks before I can go out in the field again.”

Kublalsingh’s first hunger strike ended in 2012 after 21 days and much attention from local and international supporters.

During the second hunger strike, Kublalsingh said he only received intravenous fluids once while being treated at the St Clair Medical Centre.

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